The 30th, anniversary edition of Musica Polonica Nova Festival will question the claim posed in the quote from Adam Mickiewicz’s Romanticism. The festival program has been designed to try and answer the question of what is more important, communicative and proper in music. Is it the transfer (reception) of emotions, the experience, the sensual perception of sounds – how they come together? Or is it about their logical organization – structure, form? Perhaps the truth lies in the automation, the way music is created on electronic devices such as computers (machines’ younger brothers), or on other, more recent developments of science and technology. These are obviously rhetorical questions, aimed to provoke discussion about the proportions and importance of both approaches in music and art. Polish history teaches that as a nation we show a tendency to tilt the scales in favour of “feeling and faith”. Poles were shaped by Romantic outbursts, emotional uplifts, together with tradition, honour, religion. Today, however, the “lenses and eye” seem to capture extending areas of our psyche and imagination – partly, yet not solely due to the giagantic, ongoing leap in technological development.
Such a specific program framework will easily contain both “media spectacles” – “paraoperas” – based on short stories by Stanisław Lem, as well as compositions that are more “classic” in their approach to music. Starting with seniors, we will listen to compositions by Zygmunt Krauze and Aleksander Lasoń, representing the group “Generation 51” ( “new Romanticism”); further on, there are the composers of the middle generation, such as Cezary Duchnowski, Paweł Hendrich, Paweł Mykietyn, Karol Nepelski, Jarosław Płonka, Dariusz Przybylski, Krzysztof Wołek, Joanna Woźny, Artur Zagajewski, Rafał Zapała, Wojciech Ziemowit Zych, followed by young and even younger artists: Piotr Roemer, Kamil Kruk, Piotr Peszat, Przemysław Szczotka, Przemysław Scheller, Szymon Strzelec. Additionally, as many as three compositions by resident composer of the festival, Sławomir Wojciechowski, are part of this year’s edition.
What if “the lenses and eye” were used not only to examine reality, but also to creatively predict the future? Such an assumption brings us closer to the works of Stanisław Lem, who is in a way the ideological patron of the festival. How about discovering what has long been known?
In his stories, Lem asks the most important philosophical questions: Who are we? What is the meaning of our existence? What is the nature of man? What are the limits to our comprehension? How far will the power of man extend over the world, the animate and inanimate nature? How far… – control and self-awareness. The issues touched by the author inspire us to reflect – also on sounds.
Fortunately (at least for now), machines and computers cannot replace the great “live” performers, who bring out the sounds enclosed in the scores of composed “ideas”. The festival will see groups such as: New Music Orchestra, defunensemble, LUX NM, Cellonet, Kwartludium, Musiques Nouvelles, NFM Wrocław Philharmonic.
Szymon Bywalec